The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience

Whether he was introducing the latest iPad or delivering a keynote presentation, Steve Jobs electrified audiences with his incomparable style and showmanship. He didn’t just convey information in his presentations; he told a story, painted a picture, and shared a vision. He gave his audience a transformative experience that was unique, inspiring, and unforgettable. Now you can do it too, by learning the specific techniques that made Jobs the most captivating communicator on the world stage.

The Virgin Way: Everything I Know about Leadership

While building the Virgin Group over 40 years, Richard Branson has never shied away from seemingly outlandish challenges that others (including his own colleagues on several occasions) considered sheer lunacy. He has taken on giants like British Airways and won, and monsters like Coca-Cola and lost. Now Branson gives an inside look at his strikingly different swashbuckling style of leadership.

Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think

Oxford professor and author Viktor Mayer-Schönberger joins Economist data editor and commentator Kenneth Cukier to deliver insight into the hottest trend in technology. "Big data" makes it possible to instantly analyze and draw conclusions from vast stores of information, enabling revolutionary breakthroughs in business, health, politics, and education. But big data also raises troubling social and privacy concerns sure to be a major talking point in the years ahead.

The Marshmallow Test: Mastering Self-Control

In The Marshmallow Test, Mischel explains how self-control can be mastered and applied to challenges in everyday life - from weight control to quitting smoking, overcoming heartbreak, making major decisions, and planning for retirement. With profound implications for the choices we make in parenting, education, public policy and self-care, The Marshmallow Test will change the way you think about who we are and what we can be.

Amazon Customer says:"Not a sweet solution pill, but still can be swallowed."

This national best seller is an entertaining, informative, and sometimes shocking expose of the way history is taught to American students. Lies My Teacher Told Me won the American Book Award and the Oliver Cromwell Cox Award for Distinguished Anti-Racist Scholarship.

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

To most of us, learning something 'the hard way' implies wasted time and effort. Good teaching, we believe, should be creatively tailored to the different learning styles of students and should use strategies that make learning easier. Make It Stick turns fashionable ideas like these on their head and will appeal to all those interested in the challenge of lifelong learning and self-improvement.

Your Deceptive Mind: A Scientific Guide to Critical Thinking Skills

No skill is more important in today's world than being able to think about, understand, and act on information in an effective and responsible way. What's more, at no point in human history have we had access to so much information, with such relative ease, as we do in the 21st century. But because misinformation out there has increased as well, critical thinking is more important than ever. These 24 rewarding lectures equip you with the knowledge and techniques you need to become a savvier, sharper critical thinker in your professional and personal life.

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

Amazon.com started off delivering books through the mail. But its visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. He wanted Amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices. To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that's never been cracked. Until now.

Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters; From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima

From the moment radiation was discovered in the late nineteenth century, nuclear science has had a rich history of innovative scientific exploration and discovery, coupled with mistakes, accidents, and downright disasters.

Alibaba's World: How a Remarkable Chinese Company Is Changing the Face of Global Business

In September 2014, a Chinese company that most Americans had never heard of held the largest IPO in history - bigger than Google, Facebook, and Twitter combined. Alibaba, now the world's largest ecommerce company, mostly escaped Western notice for over 10 years, while building a customer base larger than Amazon's and handling the bulk of ecommerce transactions in China. How did it happen? And what was it like to be along for such a revolutionary ride?

The American Civil War

Between 1861 and 1865, the clash of the greatest armies the Western hemisphere had ever seen turned small towns, little-known streams, and obscure meadows in the American countryside into names we will always remember. In those great battles, those streams ran red with blood-and the United States was truly born.

The Story of Human Language

Language defines us as a species, placing humans head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators. But it also beguiles us with its endless mysteries, allowing us to ponder why different languages emerged, why there isn't simply a single language, how languages change over time and whether that's good or bad, and how languages die out and become extinct.

Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built

In just a decade and a half, Jack Ma, a man from modest beginnings who started out as an English teacher, founded Alibaba and built it into one of the world's largest companies, an e-commerce empire on which hundreds of millions of Chinese consumers depend. Alibaba's $25 billion IPO in 2014 was the largest global IPO ever. A Rockefeller of his age who is courted by CEOs and presidents around the world, Jack is an icon for China's booming private sector.

The New Rules of Retail: Competing in the World's Toughest Marketplace

The retail world is undergoing a fundamental transformation. Rapidly evolving technology, globalization, and a saturated marketplace offer consumers instant access to thousands of equally compelling products and services, creating unprecedented levels of expectation. The impact of these changes is so profound that 50 percent of today's retailers and consumer companies will not survive it....

Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money, and Power

Trump Revealed offers the most thorough and wide-ranging examination of Donald Trump's public and private lives to date, from his upbringing in Queens and formative years at the New York Military Academy to his turbulent careers in real estate and entertainment to his astonishing rise as the front runner for the Republican presidential nomination. The book will be based on the investigative reporting of more than two dozen Washington Post reporters and researchers.

Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of the Elements, From Arsenic to Zinc

Like the alphabet, the calendar, or the zodiac, the periodic table of the chemical elements has a permanent place in our imagination. But aside from the handful of common ones (iron, carbon, copper, gold), the elements themselves remain wrapped in mystery. We do not know what most of them look like, how they exist in nature, how they got their names, or of what use they are to us.

The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements

Reporter Sam Kean reveals the periodic table as it’s never been seen before. Not only is it one of man's crowning scientific achievements, it's also a treasure trove of stories of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession. The infectious tales and astounding details in The Disappearing Spoon follow carbon, neon, silicon, and gold as they play out their parts in human history, finance, mythology, war, the arts, poison, and the lives of the (frequently) mad scientists who discovered them.

The God Delusion

Discover magazine recently called Richard Dawkins "Darwin's Rottweiler" for his fierce and effective defense of evolution. Prospect magazine voted him among the top three public intellectuals in the world (along with Umberto Eco and Noam Chomsky). Now Dawkins turns his considerable intellect on religion, denouncing its faulty logic and the suffering it causes.

The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution

Virtually all human societies were once organized tribally, yet over time most developed new political institutions which included a central state that could keep the peace and uniform laws that applied to all citizens. Some went on to create governments that were accountable to their constituents. We take these institutions for granted, but they are absent or are unable to perform in many of today’s developing countries—with often disastrous consequences for the rest of the world.

The Power of Broke: How Empty Pockets, a Tight Budget, and a Hunger for Success Can Become Your Greatest Competitive Advantage

Here, the FUBU founder and star of ABC's Shark Tank shows that, far from being a liability, broke can actually be your greatest competitive advantage as an entrepreneur. Why? Because starting a business from broke forces you to think more creatively. It forces you to use your resources more efficiently. It forces you to connect with your customers more authentically and market your ideas more imaginatively.

Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future

In the spirit of Steve Jobs and Moneyball, Elon Musk is both an illuminating and authorized look at the extraordinary life of one of Silicon Valley's most exciting, unpredictable, and ambitious entrepreneurs - a real-life Tony Stark - and a fascinating exploration of the renewal of American invention and its new makers.

Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry

Losing the Signal is a riveting story of a company that toppled global giants before succumbing to the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. This is not a conventional tale of modern business failure by fraud and greed. The rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals the dangerous speed at which innovators race along the information superhighway.

Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life Without Losing Its Soul

In 2008, Howard Schultz, the president and chairman of Starbucks, made the unprecedented decision to return as CEO, eight years after he stepped down from daily oversight of the company to become chairman. Concerned that Starbucks had lost its way, Schultz was determined to help it return to its core values and restore not only its financial health, but also its soul.

Publisher's Summary

Drawing on unprecedented interviews with former Wal-Mart executives and a wealth of staggering data - such as that Americans spend $36 million an hour at Wal-Mart stores - this is an intimate look at a business that is dramatically reshaping the American economy.

Wal-Mart is not only the world's largest company; it is also the largest company in the history of the world. Though 70 percent of Americans now live within a 15-minute drive of a Wal-Mart store, we have not even begun to understand the true power of the company and the many ways it is shaping American life. We know about the lawsuits and the labor protests, but what we don't know is how profoundly the "Wal-Mart effect" is shaping our lives.

Fast Company senior editor Fishman, whose revelatory cover story on Wal-Mart generated the strongest reader response in the history of the magazine, takes us on an unprecedented behind-the-scenes investigative expedition deep inside the many worlds of Wal-Mart. Fishman penetrated the secrecy of Wal-Mart headquarters, interviewing 25 high-level ex-executives. He journeyed into the world of a host of Wal-Mart's suppliers to uncover how the company strong-arms even the most established brands. And he journeyed to the ports and factories, the fields and forests where Wal-Mart's power is warping the very structure of the world's market for goods.

Wal-Mart is not just a retailer anymore, Fishman argues. It has become a kind of economic ecosystem, and anyone who wants to understand the forces shaping our world today must understand the company's hidden reach.

What the Critics Say

"In the end, Fishman sees Wal-Mart as neither good nor evil, but simply a fact of modern life that can barely be comprehended, let alone controlled." (Publishers Weekly) "He brings to light the serious repercussions that are occurring as consumers and suppliers have become locked in an addiction to massive sales of cheaper and cheaper goods." (Booklist)

I'd read the article Fishman wrote in Wired a couple years back, so I was interested to learn more. The book was a nice, balanced look into what makes Wal-Mart tick, and some of the repercussions of their single minded drive to lower prices. While I was interested in the subject, I'm more of a fiction book reader, so I wasn't sure if I'd stick with a long non fiction book on business. Surprisingly, it went by fairly quickly, kept my interest the whole time.
If you're a Wal-Mart hater, you'll find ammunition in there, especially with regards to cheap salmon and gallon jars of Vlasic pickles. If you're a hard core capitalist, you'll appreaciate the fact that shopping at Wal-Mart saves many, many families a good deal of money due to their focus on lowered prices.

By chance, I listened to this soon after after re-reading "Atlas Shrugged". It made for some interesting mental comparisons.

Since I work at Walmart I have found this book so interesting. I am only half way though it and am captured by all the ways in which Walmart started. I also know the day to day routine of Walmart so I am hoping the last half of the book will detail my daily life. As with all jobs it's a 50/50 kind of place to work, I am thankful they hired me since I am an older person but find they are all talk and no action. I hope more will listen to this book and learn from it. I have also purchased the book for my hearing impaired friends to read....

This was a very good book. Entertaining and informative... though a little repetitive at times. Never boring, a few too many percentages and numbers to keep in mind... but overall gives a great perspective into how Wal-Mart is effecting the world.... hence the title.

This is a good history of Wal-Mart from the early days in Arkansas as a down-market discount store, through its rise. Even in the late 80s, retail analysts predicted continued dominance by Sears and K-Mart. Now as #1, its the winner everyone loves to hate.

I agree with other reviews here that the later chapters show a lot of anti-Wal-Mart bias. But the book is a good history, that describes how Wal-Mart works, its effects on suppliers, and covers criticism right up to the recent "poverty effect" papers of 2005.

I must admit up front that I have never been in a Wal-Mart store and there is no Wal-Mart store anywhere near where I live. My second disclaimer is I absolutely hate to shop; I rush in and obtain the items I need and rush out of the store. Since the 1960 I have made it a mission of mine to buy products made in the United States even if I have to pay more or do without if I cannot find products made in the United State or Canada.

Fishman has done extensive research for this book. He has drawn on unprecedented interviews with former Wal-Mart executives; pursued a wealth of business and economic data and has created an interesting look at the corporation.

Fishman states the story of Wal-Mart is really the story of the transformation of the American economy over the past twenty years. Fishman presents a case for Wal-Mart (mostly consumer benefit) and against Wal-Mart. Fishman puts the reader inside the company’s penny-pinching mindset and shows how Wal-Mart’s mania to reduce prices has driven suppliers into bankruptcy and sent factory jobs overseas.

The “Wal-Mart effect” has become a common phase in the vocabulary of economists, and includes a broad range of effects, such as forcing local competitors out of business, driving down wages, and keeping inflation low and productivity high. Fishman discusses the replacement of quality with cheapness. The author sees Wal-Mart as neither good nor evil, but simply a fact of modern life. I enjoyed the fact he told stories and named the product and or company he spoke of to demonstrate the good or bad effect. I found the afterword the most important part of the book.

The book is well written and well organized. Fishman has made the book understandable and easy to read. Alan Sklar narrated the book.

Changed my view on Wal-Mart. Now I still believe WalMart is somewhat evil, but at the same time is only a product of capitalism. WalMart isn't all bad, and has most likely been a benefit to an American's quality of life.
It was not an extremely biased view of walmart, either positive or negative, the author merely did his best to explain how walmart does business based on some very specific examples.
This book confirmed for me that there are items that are OK to buy at walmart and others that are not.

In the last quarter of the 20th century there were 2 larger than life business stories. One was Microsoft and the other was WallMart. The fact that they used almost opposite strategies for almost everything is fascinating. In the end the similarities seem no deeper then that they both developed some degree of monopoly power and both were unsure how to use that power. Also both are polarizing companies.

As a business practitioner, the book also contains some very useful examples of the death sentence that the market place will imposed on you if you chase every possible sales with no clear strategy.

Intriguing and thought-provoking. Regardless of how one feels about this massive retailer, its place in the global business community and its effect on our culture are undeniable. Whether a driving force on culture or merely a reflection of sociological change, the book provides significant food for thought and conversation. Well worth the time.

We are currently facing a Wal-Mart Super Center invasion in our town. At first, I thought it would be nice to have a Wal-Mart near by--nearer than the three other Wal-Marts which are each 20 minutes away. But after listening to this book, I changed my mind.

Even if you're not a mathematician, the author presents the data in perfectly, logical and understandable ways. The real-world examples of how company's benefit ("Makin' Bacon") and suffer (Huffy bicycles) because of Wal-Mart is eye-opening.

Both the examples and numbers are staggering! And they're non-stop! The comprehensive facts and figures in this book will leave you with your jaw on the floor. For instance, Wal-Mart sells more goods by St. Patrick's Day than Target, its nearest competitor, will sell all year!

Like a previous reviewer states, this book is a very balanced presentation. However, what seemed obvious to me is that the good that Wal-Mart apparently does, eventually leads to bad things. The way Wal-Mart permeates everything in the world...no that's not an overstatement...it makes Ma Bell pale in comparison. Why Wal-Mart isn't investigated as a monopoly is beyond me...just my opinion.

I cannot praise Charles Fishman enough. Listening to this book took more than 9 hours...it felt like 9 minutes. Everyone should get a copy of the "Wal-Mart Effect", whether you shop at Wal-Mart or not. Think of this book as the cheapest class you can take to become a truly informed consumer. Learn all about how the retail industry operates...or rather how Wal-Mart forces the retail industry to operate.

Long and short of it is, for or against Wal-Mart, if you listen to this book, you will NEVER look at Wal-Mart the same way again.

A very light and superficial approach to the "Wal-Mart phenomenon". Gets into some of the history and mindset of this company, but avoids tough topics such as unfair competition, the encouragement of "economic cheaters" such as China (a country which cheats on environmental pollution, social obligations, intellectual property, etc.), and the addiction of American shoppers to "conspicuous consumption". A good introduction to Wal-Mart, but very light. Also, the sycophantic demeanor of the author does get boring after a while.